Immigration Macedonia

Immigration Asylum; Syria Where an asylum petitioner from Syria suffered no persecution after she left her home and moved to Damascus, she cannot show a likelihood of future persecution if denied asylum. “Abraham notes that the IJ and BIA did not address the testimony given by her cousin that she would be the victim of an honor killing on her ...

Immigration Preemption A state law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of job applicants is not preempted by federal law.  Arizona’s licensing law falls well within the confines of the authority Congress chose to leave to the States and therefore is not expressly preempted. While IRCA prohibits States from imposing “civil or criminal sanctions” on those who employ unauthorized ...

By JASON SMATHERS Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A bill mirroring some of the tough enforcement measures of Arizona’s controversial immigration bill was introduced Tuesday by a state Republican legislator in Wisconsin. The legislation introduced by Rep. Don Pridemore of Hartford would force local law enforcement to ask those stopped for civil or criminal violations for proof of citizenship ...

Immigration Asylum; Pakistan Being a single Westernized woman is not a sufficient reason to obtain asylum when facing removal to Pakistan. “The reasons cited by the Board and its conclusions are consistent with our repeated reminder that ‘general conditions of hardship that affect entire populations . . . are not persecution.’ Ahmed v. Gonzales, 467 F.3d 669, 673 (7th Cir. ...

Immigration An alien convicted of sexual abuse of a minor is not eligible for waiver of removal. “The Supreme Court held in St. Cyr that ‘§ 212(c) relief remains available for aliens . . . whose convictions were obtained through plea agreements and who, notwithstanding those convictions, would have been eligible for § 212(c) relief at the time of their ...

Immigration Removal; motions to reopen Where an alien did not timely file a motion to reopen a removal order, his petition must be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. “Tapia received the order on November 1. His signature is on the order; so is his thumbprint. Perhaps the Department did not ‘serve’ the order in the sense of mailing an additional ...

Immigration Cancellation of removal A conviction for possession of drug paraphernalia is a violation of a law relating to a controlled substance, rendering an alien ineligible for cancellation of removal. “Under the statute as structured, in determining whether a conviction falls under § 1182(a)(2) the petty offense exception contained within that provision must be considered. 23 I. & N. Dec. ...

Immigration Asylum; motions to reopen Where the evidence an asylum claimant offered in her motion to reopen was available at the original hearing, the motion was properly denied. “Nor can Jiang rely on her claim that because she has had two children in the United States she will face persecution in China for violations of that country’s one-child policy. That ...

The search for qualified candidates is taking some companies outside Wisconsin and the U.S. even though in-state workers are desperate for jobs. “We’re not a country that turns out as many architects and engineers as needed for the future,” said Wendy Culver, human resources director at Mead & Hunt Inc., Madison. “So we find a lot of those professionals from ...

Immigration Asylum; Lebanon It was not error to deny asylum to a Christian facing deportation to Lebanon. “Kiorkis’s argument concerning the evidentiary standards applied by the immigration court is not supported by the record. Kiorkis has failed to identify any part of Judge Kessler’s opinion that indicates that she did not weigh the totality of Kiorkis’s circumstances or that she ...

Immigration Collateral estoppel Collateral estoppel was properly invoked to prevent an alien who had been denaturalized from relitigating issues at his removal hearing. “The bookends of Osyp Firishchak’s life have involved deportation, on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean, on different sides of the process, and by profoundly different means. When the government learned that Firishchak had been allowed to ...

Immigration Cancellation of removal; judicial review The court has jurisdiction to review a single-BIA-member review that went beyond merely affirming, modifying or remanding the IJ. “The heart of petitioners’ argument is that the decision issued by a single BIA member in the case was not a ‘brief’ order, as the language of subsection (e)(5) describes. Because the decision was perhaps ...

Immigration Ex post facto clause Retroactive application of criteria for deportation does not violate the ex post facto clause. “In Padilla, the Court held that counsel for an alien charged with a crime has a constitutional obligation to tell the client that a guilty plea carries a risk of deportation. Id. at 1486. In reaching that conclusion, the Court noted ...

Immigration Asylum; removal; credibility determinations An IJ did not err when she made an adverse credibility determination regarding appellant’s claims in an asylum application that the Chinese government had forced his wife’s abortion and sterilization, where there were inconsistencies in his testimony and the DHS submitted evidence that the certificates of those procedures were falsified. “Turning to the IJ’s adverse ...

Immigration Advance parole; revocation Where a grant of advanced parole is later revoked, the alien must be permitted to reenter the United States for the purpose of reacquiring lawful resident status. “We do not retract our earlier statement, based on our previous decision, that the immigration statute makes the grant of advance parole discretionary, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A), and its ...

Rep. Don Pridemore of Hartford recently announced he plans to introduce an "Arizona-like" immigration bill in the Wisconsin Legislature when the new session begins this January. To put it bluntly, this legislation is wasteful, unconstitutional and has the potential for unintended racist consequences.

Immigration Removal; undue hardship It was error to deny a request for cancellation of removal based on undue hardship to the claimant’s children, on the basis that the claimant’s husband could care for them, when the husband also faced removal. “We find that Champion’s allegation that the BIA ignored the evidence she presented concerning Yomi’s potential deportation was a good ...

Immigration Asylum; past persecution Witnessing acts of violence against others does not constitute persecution to support a claim for asylum. “We have no intention to minimize a child’s witnessing of a stabbing and other acts of violence committed against members of his own minority religious group. Nevertheless, under our precedent, the Board’s conclusion that the harms Mr. Vahora personally suffered ...

Immigration Voluntary departure; continuance Where an alien participated in a fraudulent immigration scheme, the court lacks jurisdiction to review the denial of her request for a continuance to pursue adjustment of status. “Pawlowska argues that we have jurisdiction under the exception in Subhan. There, the petitioner was seeking to adjust his status and requested a continuance to allow him to ...

Immigration Asylum Where an asylum claimant’s testimony was rife with inconsistencies, the immigration judge properly denied her claim. “Based on Toure’s testimony at the 2007 hearing alone, the IJ had sufficient grounds to find her testimony incredible. Toure’s testimony was replete with material inconsistencies, including the length and conditions of her confinement, her knowledge about the whereabouts of her brother ...

Immigration Exhaustion Where an alien did not preserve an argument before the BIA, he cannot raise it on appeal. “The government is correct that Muratoski did not exhaust the argument he makes now because he did not raise it in his motion to reconsider. In the motion to reconsider, Muratoski did not contend that the Board misconstrued Section 1101(f) but ...

United States Court of Appeals CIVIL OPINIONS Immigration Removal Even if aliens did not engage in fraud in obtaining I-551 passport stamps, they are removable where they did not obtain them leally. “The Mozdzens argue that they were lawfully admitted in 1999, but the definition of admission for an alien and someone with LPR status differ. For an alien, admission ...